Early propagation of tomatoes

Finally it's February, and according to most garden calendars I can now start propagating tomatoes from seeds. Last year I didn't start until March, and that was a little late for our warm area here in the Rhine-Neckar delta of Southern Germany. By starting early, I'll have very sturdy plants by April, when they'll go into large pots along the warm south wall of my allotment cottage.

This year I decided to purchase windowsill propagation sets from the garden center, rather than just planting seeds in a hodgepodge of yogurt cups and fruit trays on the windowsill. It's not really a luxury, since they are incredibly cheap. Here are the two I bought, including biodegradable cells, propagating soil mix, covers, and even some seeds (radishes, dill and sunflowers). I decided not to go for electric heating, since we have some very warm windowsills.

A friend who has been growing tomatoes for years gave me some seeds year before last. For over twenty years she has removed the seeds from the choicest fruits of her best plants and saved them for the subsequent year. Following her example, I harvested seeds from my three favorites of the plants I grew from her seeds. The seeds along with their gelatinous surrounding substance are placed on aluminum foil, allowed to dry (making them stick on), labeled, folded to keep out the light, and stored. I don't know the correct names of the original varieties, and after so many years of selection and propagation, the plants may not even conform to them anymore.

We call them "paprika", "peach", and "oxheart" tomatoes. The peach tomatoes are large and yellow (even their seeds, in the lower left-hand corner of the foil above, look yellow), the oxhearts are huge and meaty, and the paprika tomatoes are long, pointed and firm-fleshed. From last year's harvest:

peach and oxheart tomatoes from last year's harvest

sliced peach tomato - delicious!

paprika tomato

So I'll be propagating these three again. However, later in the summer most of my oxheart tomatoes developed some kind of blight, as did my neighbors' tomatoes as well. Since I have my tomatoes in pots under an overhanging roof, meaning they don't get rained on and have no contact with garden earth, I was less affected than others, but some of my tomatoes still looked like this:

For this reason I want to try some allegedly resistant hybrids this year, in addition to our own "heritage" tomatoes. This hybrid, Delizia F1, claims to be resistant to tomato tobacco mosaic virus (TMC) and to fusarium wilt, two widespread tomato diseases.

I've also ordered bush tomato seeds (Balkonstar, Lycopersicon esculentum) from Dreschflegel, a cooperative of 14 farms that produces and markets organic seeds. Many thanks to Sisah's blog for introducing me to this link, even though I ended up ordering more than I'll probably be able to plant (besides the tomato also paprika, pumpkin, zucchini, and lentil seeds, something I've always wanted to try).

Does anyone have any experience with disease resistant hybrid tomatoes?